Interior Design

For my 40th birthday Jules sent me a copy of the Design Sponge DIY home decor book (thanks Jules). Thumbing through the pages I began to realize that with very little effort our house could be transformed. We rent, and our house only has two bedrooms, so by the end of elementary school Seth is bound to outgrow it. We could invest in better carpet, but time flies and we would be moving before the carpet was even broken in. We could paint every room in the house, but that takes valuable time and I would rather be swimming, snowboarding or soccer gaming. We needed to choose what to do to make it our own within budget and reasonable time. Here is what we did.

A few years ago we purchased a Modernica day/bed sofa in golden yellow. You can see it here in the “thinking” corner of our living room. I purposely leave this corner open. Seth commonly lounges on the sofa with his head hanging over the edge and reads a book. You can see there is one open there in the bright morning light. The perpetually changing pile of books and 70’s yellow fabric reminds me of old school institutional libraries – no frills places where you can let your guard down and open your mind.

Light is an issue in this house. The cottage is positioned on the eastern slope of a mountain, so there is never a “bright” time of day. That said, the sofa sometimes seems dark and moody, but more often it has a sunny lively demeanor. The cushion on the ottoman comes off. When Seth is away the pillow stays on. When Seth is here he takes the pillow off and uses the resulting coffee table for the business of the little boy. The pillows are the perfect firmness for Lego play, comfortable enough to let your imagination flow, but stable enough to land a ship on. It is remarkable how much a piece of furniture can facilitate life.

Up until Labor Day weekend the wall below that runs across the house from the living room to the kitchen was painted primer white. Ryder made me stay home from whatever trouble I would have gotten in had I gone camping, and forced me to paint the wall. Well not exactly forced. Once I started to see how unifying and chipper the color was I could not stop. I always turn into my mother in situations like these, hyper-focused forgoing sustenance and rest till my vision is realized.

Choosing a color to paint a wall can be an endless chasm of choices. That is, if you don’t already have a piece of furniture in a happy color that you love. Gold complements all the people who live here, and I would go so far as to say that painting our wall gold has brought us even closer to domestic bliss. Our house now feels like what a bee must experience collecting pollen on a giant sunflower. Warm filtered light reflected off the yellow petals, yet still in the shadow as you cling to the upside down flower in the endless pursuit of collection. I now think of our house as the “hive house”. “Hive” in the sense that it is warm and buzzing with bees, but also “hive” as if we hived off a portion of summer and preserved it here to live in through the damp cold of the Santa Cruz Mountain winter.

Painting the central wall “Midas Touch” required other walls to be updated too. The wainscoting below was a “redwood” color. Before the gold was even dry, I dug in the garage for some old primer and covered the offending orange. Now the light in the kitchen itself is even cooler, but it is off-set by the glow from the rest of the house. I like the way the two temperaments play off each other. I might add that our vast crop of Lumina pumpkins does a good job transitioning the eye.

This painting had to hang somewhere, but it sort of clashes with the gold. We hung it on an old nail in the living room and the placement was perfect. The living room is, for all intents and purposes Seth’s room. The mechanized little boy vibe of the oil is a nice juxtaposition to the cozy reading chair, vintage children’s books and “Goodnight” house. This corner is dominated by the wood stove, and in the winter it is alive with the primal element. I think this painting will hold it’s own when winter waltzes in and we are forced to acknowledge our survival hefting logs and tending coals.

Speaking of heating, we do not use the gas heater on the wall because propane is simply too expensive. Instead we use molding hooks and Ikea frames to document the drawing du jour. I was finding that although Seth always has sketch books at his disposal, he will often draw great works on computer paper. Since the heater is metal I was using magnets to a fix these drawings. However, it still looked messy and I found myself never stopping to enjoy the work. In the frames, I look more closely at the drawings and admire the detail. The frames are easy to use so Seth can take the work in and out as he pleases. At some point down the line I would like to make a fabric slip cover for the heater, but for now we are working with the “Duchamp” of it.

Earlier in the summer we made a few critical mods to the kitchen. The most impactful being the chalk board paint island. You can see the grey triangle tiles in the back splash. They are impossible to change. When the island was white the first place you looked was those darn triangles. We had to upstage them, yet acknowledge them, such that no one could accuse us of “throwing up a distraction”. The chalk board, especially after a wipe-down matches the tiles perfectly. We use the chalk board for everything. My favorite use was over the summer. Seth had to stay at home with me while I worked on certain days. We would write down the schedule on the board together. He liked the physicality of it, and the fact that he had “buy-in” to the schedule. It was a handy parenting tool because he could read the times he had written on the board, and he could check the clock on the stove. If I was on a call with a client I would simply point to the board and that was his cue to check the time parameters. This worked well except when I was outside the tolerances :-).

Behind this curtain are the washer and dryer. I am perpetually closing the curtain after people, but the pretty allium pattern rewards me for my toil.

My favorite update to the copesthetics of the kitchen was the addition of proper stools at the drawing table. The house had come with some white dowel stools that were falling apart when we got here. We decided to retire those and drop some cash for well designed relatively good quality stools. I like the fact that the legs are tapered and they blend perfectly with the vintage drafting table. We spend so much time at the table making stuff that is critical to our futures. Good stools seemed like an investment worth making. Although, it is funny that we spent our decorating budget on the least flamboyant items in our home.

I hope your summer was abundant, and autumn finds you well stocked with ideas for the long winter ahead. – Alis

Man dens can be quite dingy and disorganized. Since I spend two weekends a month at Ryder’s, I decided that was enough time to warrant an intervention. The house is fashioned of slump stone with concrete floors. Overall it has a very 70’s vibe. However, there are a few saving graces like the awesome sun room where I have my office, and the retro Heath tile counters in the kitchen. After spending a year frequenting this place the house finally spoke to me. It had to be fresh green, it called for graphic nature and bright white.

The little side table was a Calderon cast-off in sort of a dark cheapo mahogany. I painted it white (all ID Grads cover your ears) and in the same stoke distressed the paint with a sander. It holds the room together nicely. It adds that feminine touch that all caves really want but are too proud to come out and ask for. The bed got a complete makeover. I even made the trek to IKEA for the right pillows at the right price. After letting them off-gas I clothed them in Herb by Jessica Jones. I found an abandoned white sheet set in a closet, and quickly got those laundered. There is a dark dusty fireplace here too, so I found the fire screen outside, I cleaned it thoroughly and whipped up a little mosaic to cover it…ta-da instant dinge-be-gone. The fabric is mainly Green Pressed Leaves By Erin McMorris. I thought this pattern best reflected the spirit of the house, but I had to turn it on the bias anyway. The best surprise of all was all the little ceramic plates that appeared here and there as I sorted through the detritus. The artist is Pat Oyama. Her work is has a light earthy quality. Now that they are all hung together on their own wall we can properly admire each piece, it’s own little visual poem.

I’ve been lusting after this orange fabric since the spring. After endless internal debate about what to make out of it I finally settled on pillowcases. I saved cash by extending with the amy butler mums from daisy chain. This way I only had to buy a yard and a quarter at $17.50 a pop, that took a nice chunk off the price.

My friend Bertie who’s studio I was sewing in lost a nephew today. As I was composing the photos I noticed that in the background was a little painting I made after my friend Bodie disappeared. The introduction of vibrant living fabric caused me to remember the memorial that is always there. It’s funny how loss can be so consuming like orange and mint pillowcases, or live with us every day and not be noticed in our internal and external landscape.

This table lived in the dark kitchen of my great aunt Genevieve’s house.For eons it was buried under layers of Jack in the Box wrappers, cat food cans and folded litter bags.At some point in it’s history it had functioned as a kitchen table. However, in my great aunt’s era it’s former glory was masked by a decidedly undomestic pall.I remember how the mint green paint used to peek out from under the garish colors, and the ever present odor of layered kitty fur and unmentionables.This table hinted at a taste for “county chic” that I just can’t shake.Long before Shabby Chic was on our “to get” lists at Target I yearned for “distressed” furniture.I longed for everyday wear and tear, signs that someone had kneaded bread and boiled laundry near by.

Well I got the bread kneading out of my system in college, and frankly I think that the modern washer and dryer are the greatest inventions ever, so where does “distressed” furniture find a place in my contemporary life? It has a place in my heart, I long for it. Ever since I could remember I wanted this table in my domestic space. I dragged it around with me in my mind. When I lived in a little cabin there was simply no room. When I moved to the farm house there was time to consider. I mean honestly how could I be fiddling around with refinishing a table that was shedding lead paint while I had a toddler in tow? The table languished in the back of my mind, reminding me of all the other things buried in my heart that for one excuse or another might never see the light of day.

It was actually Jim who liberated the farm table. I had agonized about how to get the paint off, and I need a respirator, and it would be a big ordeal… When I showed it to him he said, “Oh that’s easy, all you need to do is wrap it in duct tape and the paint will come right off and stick to the tape”. He was right, one insight set the table free.

It only took 20 minutes to wrap the table. The removal of the tape and sealing of the paint took another 40.

One of the interesting things I noticed was that the table had been painted over many times. Each time it was painted no one had bothered to clean the dirt and grime off. So either my ancestors were terrible housekeepers, or like me they accepted life as it was and simply painted over when they needed to move on. It is much easier to have a distressed table then have a distressed life. I find it empowering to have an object on which I can offload scary things, sad things, anxious things and all the other dismantling feelings I have collected along the way. The table is at home and looks great completely exposed. I want that naked confidence, but right now that seems better left to the table. Instead I will sit back and enjoy it’s domestic bliss, sorting through the mail and belaboring the occasional flower arrangement.

Before becoming mine, this chair lived in my grandmother’s basement on the Stanford Campus.No one seemed to know where it came from, and no one seemed to want it.The fact that it had no history makes it ideal for my vintage mint green mission!

I stripped the paint off this chair when I was 18.At the time I thought I would either paint it shiny black or cherry red.Those were the Axel Rose years.And frankly it is probably better that I didn’t paint the chair then, because it’s not a good idea to commit to anything when you are 18.The chair actually looked great for exactly 18 years after it was stripped.The bare wood kinda’ meshed with my previous driftwood and lavender aesthetic.However, after many a wax puddle and the general wear and tear of non varnished living the chair just looked and felt dingy.Every Martha Steward knock off mag on the shelf will tell you that the best way to reclaim not so high quality furniture is to give it a fresh coat of paint.Well my life needed a fresh coat of paint.

I was initially going for whimsy, but then I spent all of last summer agonizing over the paint color. Then the winter passed with the unopened can of paint on my seed sideboard. This really took the whimsy out of it. Mint green you might ask? Well, it’s complicated…I’d been obsessing about the colors of late summer, spent hydrangea, water starved lavender, iris stem. But really the driving force was the house. This house/the ghost that resides here is really bossy about colors (and chintz, and four o’ clocks, and climbing roses). Granted she is usually right, it’s just weird to crave mint green, and wintergreen blue, only to notice that every chipped door frame, and missed cabinet interior reflects this palette!

I have to confess spending a lazy summer afternoon paining an old chair in the shade of rustling poplars is heavenly. It’s days like these when I miss my mom. There was always time in summer to spend an afternoon just the two of us doing something nonessential and crafty. We would visit thrift shops looking for the ideal chair to recover. This was the 80’s and grandparents were dying left and right. As a result the thrift shops were filled with 1950’s and 60’s wardrobes. My mom couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to revisit a fashion era that included crinolines, but I understand now that those were stolen moments with a relaxed teenager. It was a way to communicate that did not involve team sports, over achieving, or malls. It was probably a time to watch and nurture self discovery. Perhaps I romanticize the past, but she was so real then. I can almost taste her warm remarks about personal style, and a confident posture.

Speaking of confidence, I can definitely thank my mom for encouraging me to take risks.Not many people would paint anything mint green.It’s nice to have the inner gumption to follow your taste instead of bending to the e Crate and Barrel of it all.Although art school did a pretty good job of bauhausing the kitsch out of me, I still follow my heart when it comes to my personal space.I really respect the personal space that my mom carved out of a 1950’s track house on the not so artsy side of town.The inside of our house was so interesting, full of inquisitive comforts and carefully selected rituals.My mom gave such great care to her interior choices, and put such hard work into restoring, recovering, polishing, placing and preparing that the minute you walked in the door you felt instantly graceful in your own skin.

On that note, it’s time for me to stop taking risks and start ironing my wintergreen hydrangea sheets.

We got in the spirit of Memorial Day by hitting the attic stairs at Gramps’ and diving head first into unearthing the family china. Charlie’s attic is awash in Victorian relics clothed in dust soaked cardboard boxes. When my grandmother moved into a retirement home all extraneous china was packed in wobbly boxes and nestled in 1980’s news paper. When my own mother died all the treasures that lived in custom cabinets carefully designed for them were packed willy nilly by a stranger and housed in boxes marked “Kitchen” for 10 years. Now that the kids are grown up and moving back in with toddlers, cousins are getting married, having babies and nesting double-time it seemed like the right moment to let the blood bath begin.

Apparently my brother Cary has a thing for china. The story goes that as a tiny child he saw some china plates and let it be known that he liked them. Ever since then this particular set has been referred to as “Cary’s China”. If this is not embarrassing enough, his wife Judy when ever given the chance tells the story of how picky Cary was about china in their wedding registry. Apparently he claimed he, “didn’t care”, but when dragged to the store became rather controlling about china selection. Apparently Judy went online later and removed all his choices from their registry . It must be true love because they are still married.

It was amazing to see Cary so galvanized about the whole thing. He swooped in like a lots-of-$-an-hour management consultant and organized the whole engagement. Not only did he bark orders and keep the junior associates scurrying, he had this incredible China Matrix in his head. He made executive matching decisions expertly, while at the same time defining new sets and subsets on the fly. He knew which box to put things in, and which box was full. We were all so cowed by his flawless execution that we pretty much praised him when he admitted that he broke a plate. Even gods make mistakes, that’s what makes them so endearing.

Everyone knows that all good swat teams have a talker.You know, the one who seems innocent but is tasked with distracting the client to delight while the rest of the team is busy squeezing the knowledge base from their underlings.That is my stepmother Mattie.According to her she had the most insane post Victorian mother anyone could have.One who hoarded furnishings, and house wares then let them rot in her barn under the pretense of “antique shop”.Mattie was an endless stream of, “Oh, look – at – that” and “My mother had one just like that” and “You know what they used to use these for”. It was very comforting to have our own on-site treasure expert along. It leant an air of professionalism to the whole operation.Let’s face it all of us want to be an Antiques Road Show expert but Mattie had the gumption to live out that dream!

Well all good romps into the past must end, and we have to embrace the present. I had forgotten that it was my dad’s birthday. He turned 68 as we unearthed our family place ware legacy. After dinner we had cake. The marshmallows were hand inscribed with chocolate penned in toothpick. Apparently, at one point in the afternoon the inscription process had to be hurriedly covered by a New York Times across the lap, as my sweet father blundered by in the innocent search for tea, or some other old guy meandering. Fortunately Cary reads body language, and like any good managing principal adeptly returned the client’s focus to the work at hand, and the attic stairs. Upon cake candles and reflection, there is not that much of the china that I really want. Did it lay there swaddled in anticipation all those years, only to wake up and be set free?